Stop Attacking Bottled Water!

Environmentalists want to wean us off bottled water. So do the
residents of Concord, Massachusetts. In fact, they want to ban it
entirely. The plastic-wasting, trash-producing product will, if some
residents have their way, be completely absent from their town.

But not everyone's ready to scrap Poland Springs, even in the bastion of liberalism known as Eastern Massachusetts. Tom Keane,
for one, would like Concord to back off a bit. Sure, bottled water is
wasteful, he admits in the Boston Globe Magazine. It's the same stuff
you get from the tap, except it comes with plastic.

But from a
different viewpoint, how is it that pure, clean, noncaloric water
should be banned, but if you take the same stuff, carbonate it, and
then add lots of sugar, artificial coloring, and some flavor, it's OK?
The residents of Concord aren't rising up against any other beverage
except water (even though water containers, usually lighter than the
stronger containers needed for carbonated beverages, consume less
plastic and are cheaper to ship).

It's nonsensical, he says.
We've finally begun training a generation to drink
water instead of Coke, and now we want them to stop: very few are going
to be willing to cart Nalgenes around with them, and water fountains
are either broken or disgusting.

So put down the recycled-plastic pitchforks, he says. "When
people grab an Aquafina from the shelves instead of a Mountain Dew,
that's one less sugary drink they’ll be consuming. ... If marketers
could persuade everyone to make bottled water their beverage of choice,
we'd all be better off."